


The Remorseful Executioner

by Dragoness Eclectic (DragonessEclectic)



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Suicidal Thoughts, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 21:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1402636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonessEclectic/pseuds/Dragoness%20Eclectic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is a coda to Verilidaine & gatekat's "Last Request". I felt bad for the poor schmuck who got stuck with the job of executioner in that fic. Oh, and massive spoilers for "Last Request", so read that fic first. Not part of my G1 continuity, but theirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Remorseful Executioner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gatekat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatekat/gifts), [Verilidaine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verilidaine/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Last Request](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027872) by [gatekat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatekat/pseuds/gatekat), [Verilidaine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verilidaine/pseuds/Verilidaine). 



> Be warned: spoilers for Verilidaine & gatekat's "Last Request". Not part of my G1 continuity, but theirs.

Pinion sat in his tiny room--not much more than an oversized closet with a recharge berth, and stared at the photon pistol in his hand again. He was a tall, slender mech with the open-work skeletal frames of a vehicular crane. During the war, he'd been a medic's assistant; he'd lifted the wounded and dying to safety and helped real medics with triage and emergency first aid. After the war...

His hand tightened around the pistol. Why, oh why had he applied for that very special Senate job, the one no _real_ medic would touch? Why had he chosen to be the Council's executioner? There was a reason no medic would take the job--it violated everything they held dear. For him, though... it seemed like a chance to get some payback. Revenge for all his friends and buildmates in Praxus, and for his teammates taken out by that cursed sniper outside Iacon, and all the dying Autobots he'd lifted off the field and carried to field repair stations--only not quite fast enough.

With his own hands he'd kill the senior Decepticon officers who ordered the slaughter. In his anger and grief, Pinion had thought that would somehow make it better, finishing off the scum who started it all. Right up until the end of the first execution, he'd openly gloated about the 'Cons finally getting what was coming to them.

It hadn't made anything better. As he looked down at the graying body, Pinion's spark felt like a cold chunk of lead. The 'Con was dead. Pinion's friends were still dead. Nothing was any better, and Pinion, who had always aspired to be a professional medic, had just used his skills to kill a mech.

After that, Pinion tried to tell himself it was just a job, that someone had to do it. He tried to do his job, and shut away the horrible feeling that he had betrayed his calling. That worked right up through the third execution, when the poor bastard of a Decepticon had to be dragged, heavily shackled, weeping and begging for his life to his execution. Pinion's hands did not shake--he'd been a medic assistant on the battlefield, and you never let your emotions stop you from doing treating the patient--but he couldn't stop wondering how many of his fellow Praxians had begged for their lives just like that, and were their Decepticon executioners just doing their job, too?

 _I am supposed to be a healer, not a killer_ , he thought for too many times to count. After the third, he started quietly applying for medical assistant positions. No one wanted the Senate's executioner in their clinic. Then it was construction jobs, clean-up, anything to get away from the killing. _No one_ wanted to work with an executioner.

Pinion kept doing his job, his spark dying a little with every execution. He heard too much--the trials weren't fair, couldn't be fair when the crime was "being on the losing side of the war". He saw them up close, the Decepticons everyone hated, saw them in the last extremity, just like all of his dying patients. _Just like them_. They were people--some faced the end with courage, some were terrified and lost all dignity at the end, begging and pleading, some faced it with rage and spite and curses. Just like his dying Autobots.

The only difference was that Pinion was killing them, instead of trying to save them. That difference, that one, only difference, was killing Pinion. He considered the photon pistol once more.

The last one--had been the worst. The infamous Air Commander, Starscream, second-in-command of the Decepticons, second only to Megatron in his atrocities, had gone to his death without fear, with an air of triumph, as if extinction was merely an temporary inconvenience on the way to final victory. The entire Senate had tuned in to watch _his_ execution, and the Prime and his officers were there in person. All Pinion had to do was his job--inject the deadly corrosive into the fuel line leading to the Seeker's spark chamber--a job he'd numbed himself to, a job he'd done too many times before. Starscream was even the same build as the last two Decepticons to be executed, the blue one and the purple and black one--oh Primus, he couldn't even remember their names!--there was no question about placement, or dose. It should have been simple and quick and _painless_.

It wasn't. Something went terribly, horribly wrong--Pinion had failed, and the proud Seeker died in agony, screaming for long, endless minutes until a sickened Prime had given the order to put the what was left of the once-fearsome Air Commander out of his misery. Pinion's protests that he'd injected the right fuel line had gone unheeded as the Prime landed on the execution stage in full battle mode and declared an end to the executions. The Senate, ashamed and afraid, had not dared to defy him.

Pinion had fled in his shame and guilt. The last few cycles had been a blur--he couldn't recharge without seeing again and again and again the Seeker's grisly death-throes. Someone had finally sent him official notice that he was fired--the Senate had no more need for executioners, and he'd had to clear out of his official lodgings and find this cheap rental.

There was nothing left for him. He'd always wanted to be a medic, a healer; he'd betrayed his calling, and no one wanted a former executioner. Pinion had no friends; few of his old friends had survived the war, and no one made friends with an executioner. He stared at his hands, not quite seeing the pistol he held. _These hands were supposed to restore life, not take it._

Pinion began to open his chest plate; he had one last execution to perform, on the one victim who most deserved it. Chest panels fully opened, he lifted the photon pistol and pressed the muzzle against his spark chamber--

"No." A translucent, dimly glowing blue hand laid over his own; Pinion looked up. Starscream looked down at him--translucent, dimly glowing, and with a strange look of pity on his face.

In his utter misery, Pinion felt no fear of the ghost. He didn't care if Starscream had come back for revenge for his horrific death--Pinion knew he deserved it. Tears ran down Pinion's face. "I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. It wasn't supposed to happen like that."

Starscream knelt, bringing himself to eye-level with the desolate former executioner. "It's okay. Really, it is." The light of other skies shone in his optics, and there was compassion in his voice. "I owe you an apology, Pinion. I am so sorry, now, that I did this to you."

Pinion stared at him, shocked and uncomprehending. "B-but I killed you--"

Starscream gave him a slight little frown and suddenly looked embarassed. "Ah, I set you up. Not _you_ , personally, Pinion, since I didn't know you, but you, my executioner. I re-arranged my fuel lines the day before my execution."

Pinion's optics widened. "You did that deliberately? But why? The pain must have been--"

"Oh, it was," Starscream said grimly, as his translucent form sparkled in the dim light. "But it was worth it! I only meant to spite the Council, to rub it in their faces what they were doing with their sanitary legal murders, but I gave Prime the opening and the motivation he needed, to stop these judicial atrocities!" His expression softened, and he rested one spectral hand on Pinion's shoulder. "But I let you be the scapegoat--I left you thinking that you had done _that_. I'm sorry. I didn't see you as a person, then--to me you were just another cog in the Council's machine. That was wrong of me--I see things more clearly now."

Pinion lost control of himself; the pistol clattered to the floor as he covered his face with both hands and sobbed without restraint. Starscream reached out and hugged the lost Autobot to him, holding him until the sobs wore down and he could talk again.

"I wanted to be a medic," Pinion finally said, staring at his hands again. "I was supposed to fix people, not kill them." He looked up at Starscream's ghost. "I am sorry. I am sorry for all of them, and I don't deserve your apology."

Starscream stood up and looked down at Pinion. "It's all right--I forgive you. It's not a matter of you 'deserving' an apology--I wronged you. I treated you as a _thing_ , someone whose injuries were of no consequence, using you for my own ends. Please.. forgive _me_."

Pinion just looked at him. "It _was_ a cruel trick. But... you suffered, you died. I'm still alive." He stared down at his hands once more. "And... someday I would have done that by mistake, and I really would have been guilty. You stopped the executions, stopped me from having to kill them anymore." He looked up again. "Thank you. I do forgive you."

Starscream knelt and picked up the photon pistol from the floor. "Let's put this away, shall we? And close up your chest panels. You've got better things to do than die."

Pinion looked at the late Air Commander. "What?" His voice was flat and empty.

"You are a medic's assistant aren't you? With ambitions to be a medic?" Starscream tossed the unused pistol on the nearest shelf.

Pinion hugged himself and stared at the floor. "I _was_. No medic wants an executioner in his clinic." He looked up at Starscream, hopelessness in his optics. "I know it. I tried and tried to get another position. Anything but this. I had better skills and experience than a lot of people, but doctors don't want to work with people like me, or have someone like me around their patients. I broke the unwritten rule--'First, do no harm'."

"Oh, is that it?" Starscream tilted his head slightly. "So, do you _want_ to be a medic again?"

"More than anything!" Pinion cried. "But I don't deserve it, and I can't--"

"Oh, hush up." Starscream tilted Pinion's chin up with one hand, looking him in the optics. "I know Prime can get you back on track, and he owes me a _very_ big favor or two. As for the other thing, you aren't the only one who's been stuck doing dirty work he had no heart for--isn't that so, Thundercracker?"

"Oh, yeah." The other Seeker was just there, blue and white and translucent, that same ethereal light shining in his optics. Pinion gasped; Thundercracker was one of the other Seekers he'd executed just before Starscream. And how were the two of the fitting in his tiny apartment? There just wasn't that much room, yet the place seemed a lot larger than Pinion remembered. 

"Been there, done that, got the bomb in my spark chamber for it. What Stars is trying to say is that we've all made wrong choices and done things we regret--a lot. Can't really hold it against you, considering. You didn't give the orders, you were just the poor bastard who had to carry them out." Thundercracker looked at his once-executioner thoughtfully. "It's all right. In the end, you didn't hurt us at all."

"What T.C. said." The third Seeker, the transparent, shimmering purple and black one--who Pinion had somehow not noticed until he spoke--smirked at him. "Like Stars said, it's all right. You want to make up for killing us? Help other mechs survive."

Starscream smiled gently at Pinion. "Listen to Skywarp--he's right. You dying helps no one--and there's a lot of people that need helping."

Just a bit dazed, Pinion looked at the three of them. "I-I will. Try to."

Starscream took in the crane-former's helpless expression. "Go. To. Ratchet's clinic. Explain to _him_ \--not some lackey--who you are, and what you want to do, and why. Trust me, he won't turn you away."

Pinion nodded. "I will."

Starscream smiled. "I know. Good-bye. We won't be meeting again any time soon." Like that, they were gone, and Pinion was alone again.

Oddly enough, he didn't feel quite so lonely.

# # # 

The next morning, he made his way to Ratchet's offices. Curiously, he had no problems getting in to see the Autobot CMO.

"Come in," said Ratchet, a tight smile on his face. "We've been expecting you... and you've got the most _interesting_ set of recommendations I've ever seen."

\-- FIN --


End file.
